Young Justice: Out of the Shadows
by Zach Meredith
Summary: After the Deaths of the original team The Justice League goes into hiding, stopping any connections with the outside world. After Bruce is seen for the first time in months from coming out of his morning for Dick, he happens to run into Dex while he sneaks into the Hall of Justice. Seeing great potential in Dex, he also reminds Bruce of Dick and he jumps back and creates a new team
1. Chapter 1

"We good, Dex?" Peter whispered to Dex, which snapped him back to reality. Dex looked around and took in the moment. It had just turned midnight, and no one had been around the Hall of Justice for hours. Dex and Peter were perched up in the trees maybe two hundred meters from the main doors, out of the camera's sight.

"Sure, but let's take a minute to go over the plan one more time, okay?"

Peter groaned and leaned back on the branch that he sat on. He had it between his legs so he wouldn't fall.

"Shut up and just go through it with me again, Peter. I'm only doing this crap because you wanted me to. I don't want to look stupid if we get busted. We could go to jail , and-"

"Okay Dex! Just go through it one more time," He said, mocking Dex. He shuffled around his black backpack and pulled out three different sheets of paper.

"Okay," Dex said, laying out the first sheet. "This is the layout of the building. I've remembered it, thanks to my photographic memory."

"How did you even get these?" Peter looked up at him.

"All I did was hack one of the main computers, no biggie." Dex said, his smile fueled by pride. He looked at the sleek and tight black suits that peter bought them over the Internet. After hours of wearing it in the winter weather, you would tend to get cold. Dex laid out the next sheet of paper. It was the same as the first, except black dots were in certain parts.

"Now, you've got your bow, right?" Dex questioned. Peter rolled his eyes and held it up.

"You knew I had my bow, we've already gone through the plan seven times."

"Not what I asked." Dex huffed. "Now, your job is to use the special arrows I made you to not hit the camera, but hit the rim of it. Now, the arrows-"

"Let out a special electromagnetic force that wires back to your pen pad so you can hack the camera's imagery and view. I got that. Next." Peter interrupted. Dex rolled his eyes and pulled his pen pad.

"Now, I'm always going to have my pen pad on me, because I did some special adjustments to it so it will stay on my arm." Dex said, laying out the final sheet. "Which brings us to this."

Peter raised his eyebrows and squinted at the sheet of paper.

"I've seen this paper eight times now and it still trips me out. What is it?"

"See? It does help to go over the plan eight times. Now, this isn't something you need to remember. I'm sure you couldn't even if you needed to. It's thousands of codes that might help me get into the system faster. Kind of like a study guide."

"Man, why aren't we super hero's? We're seventeen and breaking into the hall of Justice!" Peter exclaimed.

"Shut up you idiot! We aren't trying to wake all of Metropolis, especially Superman."

"Chill out Dex, there'll be no problem with Superman. There hasn't been a single sighting or a sign of anyone from the Justice League in months. We're fine. It;s security we're getting past, not the league."

Dex rolled his eyes.

"Whatever, let's do this. Let's find out what happened to the justice league."


	2. Chapter 2

_You ready?_ I mouthed to Peter, who was meters away from me behind a tree, as I was. He nodded, bow drawn. I turned my pen pad on and pulled the special glove out to be ready when the camera needed to be hacked. I gave Peter a thumbs up. He put his shirt collar over his nose and rolled into the clearing, pulling an arrow back and letting it go quicker than I could blink. He swiftly rolled back behind the tree and drew another arrow. I waited a second until the camera screen popped up on my pen pad and began to type quickly. After a few seconds I was in. I rewinded the footage before Peter rolled out and shot the arrow, and put it on a loop so we could walk through it clearly. I nodded at him and we both got up, running towards the building.

"The next camera's on the side, almost at the middle and top" I called, readying my pen pad. Peter quickly tumbled to the side and shot another arrow before jumping back into shrubbery. I quickly typed the same seventeen character code and rewinded the new camera and put it in the same loop.

"What's the point?" Peter said, standing up and brushing leaves off of him. "I'm sure that a security guard would be pretty confused to see a camera rewind.

"It's okay, the cameras are checked every seven minutes. Plus there's an unlikely chance that they would look at the camera I was working on.

"Well, how much time do we have before the check?"

I looked down at my watch, it was 12:09 a.m.

"We have five minutes exactly, let's make em count."

"Well, how many cameras are there?" Peter asked, sprinting to the side of the building. He pulled an arrow out of his quiver with a grappling hook end.

"Once you get up there, there's a camera on the side of an air vent. Go."

"What about you?" He demanded, wrapping the rope around his hand.

"I forgot to mention that a security guard circles the building every ten minutes. Go up, and I'll take the guard."

Peter nodded and quickly scaled the building with the rope. He was amazing, in my opinion, he really should have been a super hero. I flipped back behind a tree when I saw the guard square his corner. I almost gasped when I looked back at the building, Peter had left the rope dangling at the side. He must have been so focused on the camera that he forgot.

Oh shoot, the camera!

I quickly turned my pen pad face up and typed the code and did the routine redirecting.

"Hey, who's there?!" I heard the guard demand. I quickly looked up with a gasp to see him shining a flashlight against my face. I turned my pen pad light off and quickly climbed the tree- escaping the guards vision. I pulled a bouncy ball from my back pack and stared hard at the side of his head. I had to hit his temple if I wanted to knock him out in time. I chucked the ball as hard as I could and sure enough, he fell to the ground moments later.

I quickly ran to the rope when I heard his radio sound, "Alpha 10 to 9, is your check clear? Alpha 10 to 9."

I dropped from the little rope I had climbed and scrambled for the radio.

"Alpha 9 to 10, the check is clear," I said in a low voice.

"Alpha 10 to 9, understood. Over."

I sighed in relief and dragged the guards body into darkness before I scaled the building.

"What took you so long?" Peter whispered.

"I had to take the guard out, and we only have ten minutes to be in and out," I said, looking back down at my watch. 12:13. "We just need to camp here for a quick minute, the cameras are about to be checked. I didn't have enough time to hack either of the first two cams audio so we have to be silent."

Peter nodded and it was 12:14.

"Bruce," Wonder woman said in shock as she looked at the cameras. All was clear. "I'm surprised to see you here."

Batman gave a sad smile as he stepped next to her. She hadn't looked back, but she knew it was him.

"Still remember my footsteps, eh?" He gave a low chuckle.

"Yes, they're silent. Like death." She smiled. Her smile immediately faded when she remembered why he had been in hiding- the mourning of Tim and Dick.

"Bruce, I'm sorry, I did not mean-"

"No, it's okay Diana. I understand. Death is practically my middle name now. How are you doing coping with Wonder Girl?"

Wonder Woman pursed her lips.

"To be honest, it's hard without Cassie. Her mother still hasn't forgiven me," She said quietly. Bruce put a hand on her shoulder, holding her close.

"Well, it's kind of ironic," She said, choking tears back. "The Justice League has been disbanded, yet we're both here. In uniform."

Bruce quickly looked up at the camera in the top right corner, at a shining of a leaf that caught his eye. A matter of fact, it caught his eye the three times in the last sixty seconds. Immediately, Bruce's fingers began to dance across the keyboard. He needed an excuse to do so, Bruce refused to enter the Batcave since Dick's death, he couldn't take it to see his uniform hanging up.

"What is it?" Diana demanded.

"I think we're being infiltrated," Bruce growled lowly. "I'm not as good as de-hacking cameras as fast as Nightwing was, but it should only take me a couple of more seconds."

"Should we go take care of it?" Wonder Woman said cautiously, putting her hand on her lasso.

"No, there's no reason for the Legion of Doom to do this, they've already won. Actually, I don't know why they haven't staring attacking Gotham or Metropolis yet. This is low rate, because-" A second later the camera next to the one in the top right corner showed two teenage boys, sitting silently.

"Well, they're only kids," Wonder Woman said in a bewildered tone.

"They can't just be any kids, look at this," Bruce said, playing back the camera. Wonder Woman watched in amazement as she witnessed the kids hack the three cameras and the blonde boy shoot arrows as if he was trained by Green Arrow himself.

"You don't think it's-"

"Of course it's not the team, Diana. I'm offended you think that the team would've gotten caught this soon. Black Canary and I trained them better than that." Bruce interrupted. The other boy, the one with Brown hair and olive skin, looked down at his wrist. The flashing pen pad light the alert in his eyes.

"He even had a computerized glove like Robin had," Wonder Woman said in awe.

"Nightwing had the glove, not Tim," Batman sharply reprimanded. "Nightwing even created his himself."

Bruce felt a little bad about yelling at Wonder Woman. Sure, he missed Tim, but Dick had a special place in Bruce's heart.

The boy with olive skin quickly tapped on his pen pad and the camera went back to it's original loop he had set up the first time. As Bruce tried to disable it again, he saw at least seven fire walls preventing him from doing so.

Bruce and Diana looked at each other with surprised faces.

"I've never seen Dick push me out of a system and set up all of those fire walls that fast, let alone_ try._ You stay here, I'm going to go pay them a little visit." Bruce said.


	3. Chapter 3

Peter swiftly dropped from one of the air vents and shot an arrow around the rimming of the fourth camera. He did a weird signal with his hand and Dex dropped in after him, tapping on his pen pad.

"Okay, we've got three minutes until the next round. What's the plan?" Dex whispered. Peter shrugged.

"To be honest, I didn't think we'd get this far." He admitted.

"Are you kidding me?!" Dex hissed. "So you thought we'd get caught?! Am I not good at what i've been doing in the past half hour?!"

"Chill out, Dex," Peter demanded. "We don't want to get caught now, the main computer is around the corner."

"No, I'm not going to chill out! You-" Dex stopped in mid sentence when he saw a metal door behind Peter. He closed his eyes and thoroughly went through the building layout that was implanted in his brain.

"What's that door? It's not in the building plan."

Peter raised an eyebrow at Dex's sudden mood change. He turned around and looked.

"An elevator. I've never seen anyone go beyond it except for the league..." Peter darted back around and stared at Dex with wide eyes.

"Oh no," Dex chuckled nervously. "We are not going down there."

"Oh come on you chicken, it's probably abandoned." Peter pleaded.

"Or maybe someone's down there. Don't forget, we're here to see if any info is in the main computer."

"Dex, there can't be a better way to find out what happened then to go down there!"

"One second, Alpha 10, I hear something." A voice sounded. Dex let off a small gasp, there was a guard at the end of the next hallway.

"Looks like we're going in the elevator!" Dex whispered in defeat, sprinting to the metal doors. He violently pushed on the button, noticing it didn't have an up or down arrow, just a colored in green circle.

"Peter, you're going to have to shoot this guy with a stun arrow," Dex sighed.

"I didn't pack any stun arrows!" Peter exclaimed silently. Dex rolled his eyes.

"Whatever! Just... shoot the guards radio when he turns the corner!" Dex ordered. He sprinted quietly and swiftly jumped back into the air vent. Lucky for him, right before the guard turned the corner. The second Dex heard the arrow puncture the metal of the guards radio he dropped back down and covered the guards mouth before he had the chance to say anything. Dex grabbed the muscle of the guard's neck as hard as he could, and seconds later the guard lost consciousness. Dex guided his limp body to the ground with a smile of triumph. As if mocking them, the elevator let off a ding to tell the boys it had opened.

"Let's go!" Peter called, rolling into the elevator.

"You better hope that the arrow didn't break skin, I didn't have tie to check." Dex grumbled, running into the elevator after Peter. A moment later the elevator doors closed an cliche elevator music seeped fromm speakers. Peter leaned against one of the elevator walls and sighed. He counted his arrows out of bordem. Dex looked over and noticed a keypad next to him.

"I only have two arrows left, so we better hope there won't be any cameras where ever the elevator is taking us."

"This was an idiot move," Dex sighed, sliding to the ground. "We should have just went back up into the air vent. If anything, it's going to be even more heavily secured than what we've already gone through. I don't know if you noticed, Peter, but hacking into the video feed was not easy. Some of the cams had different codes. Now here we are, going into unmarked territory."

"I did notice Dex, and I'm very greatful that you helped me, so chill out. I'm sure it was very hard, and that's exactly why I didn't ask for any other of my friends to do this."

"You don't have any other friends." Dex laughed, rolling his eyes. Peter playfully punched Dex's arm.

"Who else can say that they got _this_ far into the hall of justice?" Peter said in awe.

"Not to burst your bubble, Pete, but the only thing we've gotten more access to than the public is getting into this elevator. But who else can say that they got this far into the hall of justice_ at night_?"

On cue, an alarm started to screech in the elevator.

"What's going on?!" Peter yelled, covering his ears.

"I don't know!" Dex yelled back, tapping back into the camera by the air vent on his pen pad. The guard that Dex had taken out was laid out on the ground and two guards were speaking into their radios next to him. One was pressing the elevator key.

"Crap," Dex hissed, jumping back to his feet. "They're calling the elevator back!"

"Well, use the key pad on the elevator wall and hack them out!"

"Shut up! I won't be able to do it with your mouth running and the alarm going off!" Dex barked. He closed his eyes and scanned through his memory of a hacking method to stall the elevator and reroute it. Dex quickly looked at his keypad and searched the virus and worm codes that he had. A couple of them he had found from one of Batman's system itself. Violently typing on the elevator keypad, he thought of what to do next. The virus and worms were only going to hold for a few moments, but it would maybe give Dex enough time to do something about regaining access to the elevator.

"An SQL injection!" Dex cheered.

"What is an SQL injection?!" Peter yelled over the alarm.

"An SQL injection lets me see the security vulnerabilities in the database, so I can find one and shut the whole security system down!" Dex explained.

"Well, do it!" Peter demanded. Dex sighed and began to type extremely fast on the keypad. Unfortunately, he knew the SQL code injections all too well. He had to use them a couple of times to attack the high school's system to make it say that Peter was present. All of the times he had done it he hadn't gotten caught once.

"Okay," Dex turned around and smiled at Peter. "It's done."

A moment later the alarm stopped and the elevator began to drop again. Dex dropped back to the floor with a sigh and looked at Peter.

"Why can't I be the one with the bow and arrows?" He joked.

"Because, I'm way cooler than you," Peter joked back.

"Well, now that that's over with, we better hope there's no other way to where we're going, because I just committed a huge crime. Probably jail worthy, so I better crash all of the cameras too."

"You just can't catch a break," Peter chuckled. Moments later the elevator chimed and they both stood to their feet.

The second it opened fear stretched over both of them. A black figure stood over them with a look that spoke death.

"It's a school night." The figure stated.

"Wholy shit," Peter gasped. "That's Batman."


	4. Chapter 4

I sighed as I continued to wait for someone to step into the interrogation room that I was in. I came willingly, but Batman had to break Peter's last two arrows and possibly his arm to take him into custody. My eyes darted to the door the second it opened. I could hardly make him out because of the blinding light at first, but Batman stepped in with my pen pad and handed it to me before he sat down.

"All of the things you had on the device was pretty impressive, but it's all wiped from the system now." He said.

"It may be wiped from the system, sir, but I have a photographic memory- it's all still up here," I said, tapping the side of my head. "It was just easier for me to look at it on the pen pad then to take a couple of seconds and pull it from my head."

"Who exactly are you, son?" Batman asked. I blinked at him for a couple of seconds.

"Dex Peterson." I replied with a sigh. " So how much time do you think I'll have to serve in the juvenile detention center?"

"None, if you agree to one thing."

I knitted my eyebrows when he picked up a small buzzing sound. Batman grunted and pressed his ear.

"What am I agreeing to?" I asked cautiously.

"Well, first tell me about Dex." He said, leaning into the table to look more intimidating. In reality he really didn't need to- he was already intimidating enough.

"What do you want to know?" I bit my lip nervously.

"Everything."

"Well, I'm Dexter Thomas Peterson, but I never use my middle name and I prefer Dex. My mom is a stereotypical drunk and I have no idea who my dad is. I-"

"Get to the part where you learned the codes and you were able to steal mine." Batman interrupted rudely. I glared at him. I wanted to tell him I knew that he was Bruce Wayne- his voice patterns were obviously the same. It was a little harder to make out because he made his voice sound gritty while he was in his Batman persona, but not impossible to pick up.

"When my mom was passed out I would hide her alcohol and when she would finally sober up she was a completely different person. She was incredibly smart, even dangerously smart at times. She taught me how to do hacking and read codes and all of that stuff the second she found out my mind was an archive where I could access files whenever I wanted. I was only eight, and she had me hacking into the banks for practice and using SQL injections at stores so she could steal more liquor because the alarms wouldn't go off when she reached the doors."

Batman stared at me for a moment without saying anything. It didn't even look like he was breathing.

"Do you remember my sidekick, Robin?"

"He was my idol for the longest time. Or the persona was, anyways. I knew that there was more than one. I'm also sorry to hear what happened with the explosion. Why do you ask?"

"I ask because when you were tapping into the cameras I tried tapping into them to reacquire the actual feed and break the loop that you had set it in, but you knocked me back out of the system and set up fire walls that even I had trouble reading. No one who had the Robin identity could do that. Not even Nightwing, who was the original Robin, and he had been doing it for quite longer than you."

"Your point?" I pressed.

"My point is that I don't have anyone under my wing anymore and I would like you to take that place." He finally said. I looked at him for a minute in silence.

"I... I don't know, Batman. Robin is the young, crime fighting boy wonder, who can do flips and cartwheels and stuff. I'm only Dex Peterson, and I don't even know how to do one cartwheel."

" A couple weeks of my intense training and you'll be as good as the original Robin, if not better. Do you remember the team of young side kicks that was associated with the justice league?"

"Yeah, that also died in that explosion, what about them?"

"I think it's about time that a new team is assembled. One different from the last. I can't just let you and your friend go. I've never seen a bowman as skilled as your friend with the exception of Green Arrow. You two have a gift, and I can't just let you get away."

"And if we say no?" I fished.

"Then I'll make sure the Gotham Juvenile Detention Center has special rooms for you two so there's no chance you can escape."

I sighed and stared at Batman for a minute.

"Well, first off, we need to find me an awesome superhero name." I smiled slyly. Batman cracked a small grin in return.

"I have an idea. Come with me and we'll start training immediately. I'll contact Green Arrow to begin to train your friend and the small amount of stuff he needs to be trained on."

"Wait, I'll be able to see Peter, right?"

"At school, but whenever you have free time you're going to be with me. It'll be that way for the next couple of weeks but it will be worth it. You're not to tell anyone or discuss this with anyone. I will arrange transportation to get you here after school and on the weekends. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

"Good. You're free to go home."

"Mom," I called as I closed my apartment door behind me. "Mom!"

"I'm in my room," A sweet voice called back. Good, she was sober. For now. I quickly ran to my room and changed out of my black clothes I had worn to get into the Hall of Justice and changed into a white T-shirt and black shorts. I stepped into my mothers room and she smiled at me. Not a bottle of alcohol was in sight.

"Hey, mom, Peter and I will be working on a project for the next couple of weeks, okay? I'll need to stay at his house after school and on the weekends so it can get done in time."

My mother quickly looked up at me.

"Dexter, you know I hate it when you lie to me." She said sternly. I tried to swallow but I couldn't because a lump was forming in my throat. "If you're trying to spend time with a girl, just say so."

I sighed in relief. My mom was clueless.

"After school everyday I want to spend time with a girl, but on the weekends I really need to work with Peter." I lied.

My mom nodded.

"Well, I'm not even going to ask why you were out this late on a school night, but whatever. Go to bed."

"Good night," I smiled. I ran off seconds later. I was going to be a superhero.


End file.
